


Arcadia

by Apostrophic



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s06e15 Arcadia, Established Relationship, F/M, Missing Scenes, Season 06, Secret Relationship, birthday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-03 00:31:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5269781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apostrophic/pseuds/Apostrophic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>She was not so easy to solve. She never was, which kept him trying.</em>
</p><p>Mulder says “marry me” three times in three days. But not like you think. “Arcadia,” season 6.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arcadia

**Author's Note:**

> Arcadia takes place the day after Scully’s birthday, so this starts on her birthday, and continues through the episode. I reference, among others, Tithonus, Two Fathers/One Son, Paper Hearts, and my own headcanon for why Mulder’s wearing that ring in the flashbacks for Unusual Suspects and Travelers. _Hint: it’s got nothing to do with Diana Fowley._

**I.  
FEBRUARY 23, 1999**

“Have Assistant Director Skinner sign off on that, you’re good to go.” The agent with Undercover Operations clicked the Bic pen, dropping the pen in his pocket as he handed Mulder the paperwork. Mulder didn’t know when those words had sounded so good, to report to Assistant Director Walter Skinner. He added a mental _kiss my ass, Kersh,_ just for kicks. 

“Agent Scully, my partner on the assignment— you got the request form she filed?”

Off the top of his head, Agent Rollins said, “Fluorescene, latent print kit, yada yada. Yeah. San Diego field office has all that taken care of. They’ll have it packed in with the items in the moving van. ‘Fragile,’ ‘photos,’ ‘china,’ marked something like that.”

“We fly in, liaise with them, and—”

“They’ll walk you through it, Agent Mulder. First time undercover?”

Mulder flipped through the IDs. Petrie, Laura. Petrie, Rob. “First time with different identities, yeah.” 

He waited in anticipation of the wisdom Rollins would dispense. 

“Break a leg,” Rollins said. Deadpan. Messing with him. “Oh. Hey.” He called Mulder back from turning away. “Can’t forget these.” 

Mulder took the Ziploc bag and lifted it into the light.

“Gold plate, cubic zirconia,” Rollins said. “Don’t let your wife get to comparing it with the other housewives, it’ll pass.” 

 _Don’t wink,_ Mulder thought.

Rollins didn’t wink. “Get used to calling her that. Endearments too. I know they tell you, but hey. It’s the little things sell it.” Rollins did chuckle. “You ask me? Get her real pissed off at you, no one will doubt for a second she’s your wife.” 

Mulder said, “You married, Rollins?” 

“Are you?”

Mulder jingled the rings in the bag and Rollins smiled.

“Going on fif— sixteen years, myself,” he said. “Mazel tov.”

 

* * *

 

It was busy for a Tuesday, the after-work crowd packed around the bar. Scully took the back booth, stretching her neck, working a knot out of her shoulder as Mulder made his way over with their drinks. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into this,” she said as he slid into the booth. “We fly out first thing tomorrow.”

“One last hurrah, Scully,” he said. He clicked her glass against his beer before she took a sip. “Maybe this should be a stag party. What’s that they call the ones for women? Stag… ette.”

“Bachelorette.”

Mulder made a face. 

“Mulder,” she said. “Ground rules, if I’m going to be married to you for a week?” 

“A week?” he interrupted. He was making a face again, this one so hopeful she had to laugh.

 

* * *

 

Voices, the clink of glasses, dim light, ESPN over the bar— two steaks and two drinks in. Mulder crossed his leg and reached in his pocket to shift the keys that poked the fabric. “Oh,” he said. “Hey.” He withdrew the Ziploc bag beneath the table, glancing down long enough to find the right end. He opened it by feel, trying not to give it away under the table. 

Scully had figured it was time for her birthday present. She bit the piece of steak off the end of her fork and chewed, waiting. 

“I’ve got a little something for you,” Mulder said.

Damn. He should have come up with a better line. Something to really tease her, fake her out. He got his face looking serious enough until Scully chewed and swallowed. He laid his hands on the table, palms down. Good. Scully gave her tiny frown, skeptical. 

“I told you, Mulder. Nothing big.” 

“This isn’t big.” 

“I told you, nothing at all.” 

“Yeah. You always say that. Scully?”

She waited. 

He really had his eyes serious now, earnest. She leaned in, a little more serious now too. He leaned further over the table, creating their intimate space. She wasn’t looking down, and he lifted the cloth napkin to lay it over his hand and then took his hand away. “Don’t get your hopes up,” he said. Perfect. She smiled.

“I never do.” Picturing tchotchkes. Souvenir keychains. She’d deny it until the world ended but he knew those were the gifts that could woo her, odd little trinkets as weird as their relationship. 

He nodded down. Scully followed his gaze down to the napkin, a pile of red cloth forming a peak in the center of the table. She glanced back up. 

He nodded again, go on.

Tentatively, Scully reached for the napkin. She raised it a little, peeking in. When she saw what was underneath she shot him a look that said _you son of a bitch,_ the game up, he got her, Mulder laughing, Scully heaving an exaggerated sigh. 

“Jesus, Mulder.”

He leaned in until his forearms were pressing the edge of the table. Eyes anything but serious, dancing now. “Marry me?”

Scully lifted the napkin all the way. A solitaire— she guessed a carat— set in an expensive-looking gold set. Rings for an Arcadia Falls trophy wife. 

He showed her the Ziploc bag, his own band inside. “What do you say?”

“They let you walk out of the office with this?”

“Cubic zirconia is a girl’s best friend.”

Scully had picked up the rings, inspecting them closely, and gave Mulder a look at that one. 

“Happy birthday, Scully.” 

He was a little bit sincere now, but not enough. 

“Mulder? You shouldn’t have.” Even with the sarcasm, a little fond.

Mulder pushed back his plate and the napkin. “Welp,” he said, and paused for effect. 

“I gotta hit the can.”

He knew the reaction that would get from Scully and it did, immediately. Standing up, he said, “Keep that up, yeah. Everybody’s gonna buy we’re married,” and bent down before he left the table to actually kiss her ear. 

Scully pushed back her own plate, a few pieces of neatly excised fat the only remnants of her steak. She slipped the solitaire on her finger, then— the wider band a little tighter on the knuckle— the wedding band. Alone at the table, she spun them on her finger with her thumb, the feel of them awkward, out of place. 

It was a simple setting, but not one she would have chosen, bigger still than Tara’s and Scully had thought it was overdone, the ring Bill had given his wife. It fit, though. Size six and one-quarter, she had had to say, not to any boyfriend but to an agent from the Bureau. She still wasn’t sure what Mulder insisted, that this assignment was one hundred percent Skinner’s idea. Mulder was grumpy enough about it, though, this unassuming first catch back on the X-Files, that she couldn’t quite credit it to him either. He didn’t have nearly the energy for it as he did for every other weird case. Maybe it was a trick of the universe. A vast conspiracy of a bad joke, all at their expense. 

Scully slipped the rings off her finger lest Mulder come back and catch her and interpret it wrongly, but then she decided that would be open to even clearer, expected interpretation and she picked them back up again. That was when Mulder reappeared, taking his seat across from her. He watched her slide the rings on her finger.

“Fit?” he said. He dropped his band out of the Ziploc bag into his open palm and slid it on. Perfect fit.

Scully took a sip of her drink, still working the rings with her thumb. She waited for some smart remark from him, something wise-ass or a come-on and she waited to shut it down. She did have rules for this assignment, after all. When a moment passed and he said nothing, she decided to run those rules down, lest he’d forgotten.

“No consorting on assignment,” she said. 

He nodded, going along.

“Not even undercover assignment.”

He nodded again. 

“Mulder, I’m serious. No clowning around. No… ‘honeybunch’ stuff.”

“Honeybunch.” He nodded. “Got it.”

“You’re taking this seriously?”

He said, “Serious as the pope,” inscrutable as ever. Scully watched him over the rim of her glass and tried to make up her mind.

 

* * *

 

**II.  
FEBRUARY 24, 1999**

Long past midnight. It was dark in her bedroom, her apartment quiet after the noise of the bar. Even the traffic had died down on the street, only the occasional passing car now, headlights passing over the ceiling. Scully lay curled on her side, half-tangled up in the sheet. When it rustled, she opened her eyes. 

Mulder was moving his foot, his toes nudging the sole of her foot. Neither one of them had moved for several long minutes.

He was facing her, head resting, like hers, on the pillow. The look on his face didn’t change when she opened her eyes. Even in the dark, his look was serious enough that she shifted her head on the pillow. 

She reached out, touched his chin with her thumb. He blinked. His eyes going warm again, but still not unserious. It took her a moment to think of something to say.

“Did you set the alarm?”

In the dark, a small, quiet laugh. He loved her pillow talk, especially her naked pillow talk. “Eight AM sharp,” he said. 

A second later, when her mind finally registered that answer, he loved the faint look of alarm on her face.

“We need to leave here no later than seven.”

He nodded. “I know. Happy birthday.” He kissed her forehead to silence the protest. He whispered there, something he did a lot, as if to bypass her ears, communicate straight with her brain. “I got us the second flight out.”

When she pulled back to look at him, his thumb stroked her cheek. He waited to see if she had an objection. She waited too, and found that she didn’t. Stack it all up and the second flight out was the least the Bureau owed them. That way lay danger, though. It was that kind of reasoning with all of its justifications that led straight to Mulder sleeping naked in her bed. He smiled when she thumbed his lip. She stayed serious. 

That place where she had been disappearing all week. Wherever she was, he wanted to crawl in, bring her back to the surface. His toes stroked the sole of her foot again. Her thumb moved down to his jaw, unshaven, never smooth this time of night.

“Did you ever think about it?” she said, like a non-sequitur.

He tried to connect the same dots she connected, waiting for her to help him catch up. 

She went on. “When you were younger. Did you ever think, by this age, you’d be settled down?”

It was the confessional time of the morning. Nothing was off limits, but also: nothing counted. He would not read into her question. 

“Sometimes,” he said. A pause. “Sure. Not as often as most people, I don’t think. It never felt like a foregone conclusion.” 

There was a strand of hair on her forehead. He picked it up, smoothed it back. She didn’t say anything. After a moment, he said, “Did you ever come close?”

He watched her swim back to the surface, hear the question, contemplate it. It surprised her, the face that came to her mind. Daniel. She wondered if that counted as coming close. 

“Once,” she said. He lifted his head, then laid it back down on the pillow. The note of hesitancy in her voice kept him from asking. She looked at him after a moment. If he had asked, she would have told him. He nodded instead. 

She was facing the window. A car passed, casting patterns of light and shadow over her face. Scully, the most mysterious creature he had ever pursued.

“I tried it once,” he told her instead, trading secrets. 

Like an afterthought, he lifted his hand with the ring. It was her turn to raise her head off the pillow, looking at him. 

“Wearing the ring,” he clarified. “Not getting married.”

She said, “You did?”

He was startled by the clarity of the memory. One he hadn’t thought of in years, tucked there amongst the other events of that year he had relived over and over. Crisp and vivid, not a photocopy of a photocopy the way most memories were. He thumbed the ring, thoughtful. “Yeah,” he said finally. “’89. Maybe early 1990.”

Scully checked to see if those dates meant anything to her. 1991 did, the year she now knew Fowley had ended their partnership, left him for parts unknown. 

But Mulder was saying, “Reggie Purdue. The John Lee Roche case. The sixteen cloth hearts?”

He said it like a question, like he had to jog her memory. He rolled onto his back as Scully shifted, accommodating this new position, her hand on his chest. Her face a slight frown, not anticipating this turn in the story.

“Thirteen cloth hearts, at that point,” he said.

She nodded. He touched the ends of her hair.

“We had to talk to the families,” he said. “Reggie and I, and Reggie… he’s way out of his depth. This was my field. It’s _supposed_ to be my field.” He could feel it, like he was still in those hot, airless living rooms. Photographs everywhere. Toys strewn on the floor. “Those grieving families, though. The mothers of those girls, and the fathers— they’d talk to Reggie. I’d be right there, I could ask them the questions— they’d answer to Reggie. Me, I’m 28. A hotshot young agent. They wouldn’t even act like I was in the room. Like it’s something I can’t comprehend, what they’re going through. When—”

She nodded. She knew. Samantha. Mulder, who could comprehend better than anyone.

“But Reggie—” he said.

Scully nodded again, the pieces clicking. “He’s the family man,” she said.

Mulder laid down his hand with the ring. “I was willing to try whatever it took. We had to nail Roche. Forty bucks at a pawn shop. Reggie thought I was out of my mind.” There was the part of the memory that brought back a faint smile. Reggie had said, _Damn it, just get yourself married in Vegas next time, that makes as much sense,_ Reggie looking at him like he was a born-again horse’s ass.

But it worked. It worked with the families. For six months, maybe more, until they put Roche away. That was the talisman that inducted him into their world, communicated to them that he could comprehend such a loss. It worked with Roche, too. Roche thought he had something to threaten, once he knew they were onto him. He thought Mulder had something to lose. That was the part he told Scully. It worked.

Not the part where he was so alone, buried so deep in the case and the wounds it tore open that the gold band had started to feel like a tether. He had started to almost believe it himself, that it _could_ be the truth, there _could_ be a family, waiting for him at home at the end of each awful day.

Scully leaned down, laid her face to his chest. It scared him for a moment that he had said that out loud. Or that she had somehow divined it, that it had leapt straight to her mind from his. He tucked her hair back, lifting her face off his chest. Looked into her eyes and tried the trick in reverse, pressing her mind against his. 

She said, softly, “You never tried that again?”

Eluding him. Evading his scrutiny. Her hair, red and tangled, against the gold. He shook his head. No. “One time only.”

He added, “I wore it up through the trial, then threw it into the Potomac. The end of all great love affairs.”

That got a smile out of her, a small one. Self-contained once again, laying her face back down. She was not so easy to solve. She never was, which kept him trying. He sighed, his hand in her hair at the base of her neck. 

 

* * *

 

His other hand had trailed down, that night as he undressed her. Down on his knees, baring her stomach, kissing her there. Pushing her sweater up and over her head, dropping it to the floor. She held the back of his head as he found the scar, touching his fingertips to it. In the dark, it was hardly a scar, just a mark, the faint bloom of raw, tender skin. 

Where the bullet tore through her, over six weeks ago. Healed over, but still a fresh shock in her mind: the punch of the bullet, and then the lack of pain, just white hot heat, just surprise. Blood on her hand when she pulled it away. It had not made any sense. She had tried to make sense as the ground came up to meet her. The world going dark. 

Just like that. No extreme circumstance, no months-long, drawn-out battle to the death. Just one single stray bullet, an accident, a punchline that came in the middle of a sentence. All these weeks later, it made no more sense, no less. 

Mulder’s gaze still went dark when he touched her there, each time he undressed her. That brief storm of a thing inside him that told her his threats to Ritter had not been idle, that had she died from that bullet someone else would have died too. It still stunned her, those moments when she saw the intensity of how much she meant to him. It overwhelmed her, left her uncertain. They made no sense, except to each other.

He had gone on that night, unzipping her skirt, sliding it down her legs. Sliding his hand back up, his other hand flat on her hip, tracing the curves of her, smoothing, stroking the pale expanse of her skin. Kissing her there, everywhere, as he went. All the time in the world to touch her, to do this for her and feel her, real and warm, wanting him, wanting this.

The storm of a thing inside her.

She was thirty-five years old.

 

* * *

 

Mulder blinked his eyes open when he felt Scully stir. She shifted against him, tucking her leg over his, her hand sliding over his stomach. Pulling him closer, adjusting against him to find a position where her back did not ache. He had just started to drift, thinking she had started to drift.

He scratched the back of her scalp, his hand still in her hair. She turned her face, pressing a kiss to his chest, the steady drum-beat of his heart, then she lifted her head to kiss him goodnight. He held the kiss for one extra moment, deepening it, Scully pressing against him. Until her eyes opened, and she pulled back and waited. He held onto her gaze.

He had remembered it, a few weeks ago, a night not unlike this one. Late at night, Scully stretched out beside him, but on a high dose of painkillers, watching a movie. She had protested at length the liberties the adaptation had taken with the book; he had not seen where that mattered. “I’d marry you for your money in a minute. Would you marry me for my money?” he whispered to her now in the dark, quoting what Audrey Hepburn had asked George Peppard. 

Somehow, Scully had already discerned that he was no longer serious. She laid her face down, this time to his neck, giving him a shake of her head. He half-expected to hear how that was not a line Truman Capote wrote. But, she sighed, a pause, then: “In a minute,” she said, giving him what he wanted. 

He smiled down at the top of her head for remembering the line, for playing along. Indulging him, humoring him, the way she did often. Letting him ease them past boundaries, try on new things. She yawned, stifling it on his chest. Never what he expected, she nudged him when he didn’t continue with the rest.

The line was, _good thing neither of us is rich_. He changed it, lifting her finger by the cubic zirconia as he said, “Good thing you already did.”

 

* * *

 

**III.  
FEBRUARY 25, 1999**

Mulder turned on his heel and wheeled back in the room. “The thrill is back,” he said, tossing the pillow onto the bed.

Scully crossed her arms like a roadblock. “Mulder. We agreed. No consorting on assignment, no exceptions. Not now.” He knew the rest from memory: _We play this one by the book._  Yeah, that had been her stance the night before, too, and yet, tired from the day, they’d slept just like he’d told the neighbors, spooned up, baby cats. The way he saw it, how was this different? _He’d told the neighbors._ So what?

He held up his left hand and made a face, showing her the gold band of his wedding ring. “Scully. They’ve served us the goddamn loophole on a platter.” He hoped his hair was standing up a bit: he knew by now well enough what worked on her. 

She sighed at him. Tired and frustrated and at her worst: preachy.

“This assignment was not permission to exploit loopholes, Mulder,” she said. An edge to her voice, there and then gone.

“Yeah, well,” he said. “It’s more fun to ask forgiveness than permission.”

“That would be your life philosophy, wouldn’t it.” Scully found his shoes in a heap at the bed. With another sigh she toed them to the side, shaking her head. “This assignment was not even my idea in the first place.”

“That’s right, it wasn’t. Mine neither. Assistant Director Walter Skinner, in his infinite wisdom. Bureau sanctioned, Scully.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Until they realize their egregious error and fire your ass and ship me off to reassignment in Hell Hole, Wyoming.”

Mulder cracked into a grin. “Hell Hole, Wyoming?”

Scully broke down begrudgingly into a tiny smile. She waved him off.

“Or, here’s a theory,” he said, picking up his shoes and tossing them against the wall. “Maybe this is ol’ Walter’s way of, you know... the wink and the nod. ‘You kids have fun.’”

He turned around to find Scully looking vaguely horrified beneath her green mask. 

He chuckled. “Scully. Scully, I’m joking.” He reached back for her, wrapping his arms around her waist. “Marry me, Scully.”

She tried to pull away. “Mulder...” He caught her back. She was no longer seriously protesting.

He kissed her neck where he could reach bare skin. “I’ll save you, Scully,” he mocked earnestly, with a dotting strand of kisses. “You and your beautiful,” he kissed, “green face.”

She pushed him away, for real this time. “Shut up, Mulder,” she said over her shoulder, disappearing back into the bathroom.

“Love you, hon,” he called, and her hand stuck out the door with its middle finger raised. He grinned, pleased. She was on board.

 

* * *

 

“Mulder, believe me, this is revelatory. This is what it means to you to play house.”

Scully leaned against the counter in her coordinated pajama set, arms crossed, a fine line between intrigued and bored.

Mulder slathered peanut butter on the slice of white bread, corkscrewing the jar lid, surveying the rest of his options and then reaching past her. “Dolphin-safe tuna, Scully.” He made a face, cringing. “Tell me. In what world is that what you serve guests for dinner?”

He rummaged through the oversized gift basket that took up half of their counter. Scully had not moved, making him reach around her. She watched this process. “Ta-da,” he said, to her or the basket, holding up a small jar of gourmet preserves. He popped the jar open, emptying half of its contents on the second slice of white bread.

“In this world, apparently,” she answered his question.

He slapped the two halves together.

“Where people don’t eat like first graders.”

Mulder stepped back, reaching for her, guiding her over in front of him. He held up the knife, then laid it in her hand. He took hold of both, reaching around her, bringing her hand with the knife down through the sandwich, slicing it in triangles right on the counter. Like he was demonstrating for her some highly difficult technique. She sighed, sagging her shoulders back against him, defeat at this unwinnable argument. There was no use fighting his weirdness. He chuckled, kissing the top of her scalp, picking up his sandwich. He sidestepped around her and leaned into the counter, taking the first bite.

Thoughtful as he watched her move around him. Scully went for the sink, rinsing the knife there, and came back with a rag. She wrung it and wiped down the counter, working around him. Exhibits A through C of what was driving him nuts about this place, and also what he was used to with her. He said, “How do you do it?” Around the peanut butter in his mouth.

Scully asked, “What?” Sensing somehow that he was speaking in general, that the ‘you’ in this instance was not specifically her. She picked up the jar, wiping beneath it, returning the jar to the basket.

He said, “Go through life like that?” He swallowed so he could speak clearly. “Like the Schroeders. Dolphin-safe tuna, and…” He tried to think of something else. Pictured the little dog yapping at the edge of the table. “Two pounds of pet.”

Scully refolded the rag over to a clean side. Mulder moved a foot down the counter, letting her reach the part of the counter he blocked. He said, almost as if he was talking to himself, “Maybe that’s what happened to the Klines.”

She frowned then, trying to follow. “Which part?”

He had been thinking it over since dinner. “What if the Klines, Scully, what if they were just… normal?” Mulder said. He gestured between the two of them, pointing back and forth with his finger. “ _Our_ normal. Not Ozzie and Harriet Manson over there.” He paused, in case she wanted time to appreciate that one, and Scully gave him an equanimous look. He went on. “What if, they woke up one morning. Stuck in this house. Painted godawful sienna… desert what-the-fuck-ever. Sienna sage. No hoop to play HORSE in the driveway.” Mulder was formulating this theory as he went; the details of it, anyway. “What if they just took off, Scully? Said fuck it, walked away. Left it all for San Tropez. Hopped the first flight to Malaysia.”

She had stopped mid-sweep of the counter, her hand resting on top of the rag. Mulder looked up from her hand to her face. He shrugged. “Is that so far-fetched?” he asked her sincerely.

Scully had thought back to Mulder, sitting across from the Schroeders, their table set with glassware and china. In hindsight, the meal a disaster, the kind of disaster particular to her partner. They had one script to follow; just for an hour, except there was no script in the world that could keep Mulder on track. The more it was demanded of him, the more he was simply incapable of complying. He had to forge his own path in everything. And the worst part of all: that was one of the traits she loved most about him. It drove her crazy, but also, it drew her to him. Moth to disastrous flame.

“It’s not so far-fetched,” she said.

He nodded.

“But, Mulder. Some people _want_ this. Some people want normal. This kind of normal.”

She knew he would glance up at that. She had readied her face. He tried to read it, trying to see if she meant herself. He did not think she did. He was never quite sure.

Mulder said, “That’s my point. The ones that don’t, they don’t fit in.” The kitchen was quiet around them. The whole neighborhood quiet this time of night. “Maybe the Klines didn’t fit in.”

She said, “Like you and me.”

He hesitated. He said, “Like me.” Hedging his bets.

The look on Scully’s face was thoughtful, nothing else. He waited her out as she thought that one over. Or, he thought that’s what she thought over, until she said, looking at him, “I’m not so sure the Schroeders fit either.”

That was the flaw in this theory. Cami, during their walk that evening, had let the mask slip. The facade falling away for a moment, the cheerful housewife revealing the unhappy woman, anxious, uncertain. Possibly trapped in a life Cami thought she had chosen. Scully, in spite of herself, had felt sympathy for her. No one, she realized all over again, knew just what they wanted. No one knew if they had it; no one knew what came next.

Mulder was watching her, curious. Scully said, “I don’t think Cami’s so happy.”

He sighed, found himself agreeing. “I think Win is scared shitless. Of what, I don’t know.” He thought about it. “Or who.”

Scully said softly, “Maybe it’s just like you said.”

He raised his eyebrows, wondering which thing he had said.

“Everybody has their own secret life.”

They shared the silence, back and forth for a moment. Mulder had finished his sandwich. Scully gave the counter one last swipe with the rag, and then she stepped past him, going back for the sink. He watched her, her reflection caught in the window, her freshly scrubbed face and her hair pulled back and her matching pajamas. When she glanced up to look out over the yard she glimpsed his reflection instead, over her shoulder. His face smiling at her before he realized he was.

It did not sound so freaky when she said it. So wild, keeping secrets. Nothing sordid. She made it sound honest, just simply human.

It _was_ honest and human. Layers and layers to people, to everyone. He said, “Scully. Did you ever think about going into psychology?”

She said right away: “No.” Twisting the rag to wring out the water. “I hear they’re all crazy.”

Over her shoulder, Mulder’s grin widened. She couldn’t help it that time, smiling herself, drying her hands as Mulder came up behind her.

For the first time in two days, since their flight had touched down, she let his arms slide around her. No protest, no evasion, no look warning him off. No speech where she preached about responsibilities. He tucked her back against him; in her bare feet and his sock feet, the top of her head fitting right under his chin. She took patience and perseverance, forever worth it.

He breathed in her hair, exhaling a sigh, one last sigh for the night. Gazing with her out the window, the long row of streetlights that curved down the block, evenly spaced, each bulb shining.

Like she was reading his mind, or reading his face in the glass, Scully could feel it too. What had stalked them for days, lurking behind every corner. The enormity of what awaited them back in D.C. This assignment would end, and their old life would resume, the brief respite over. Back to their work, back to the basement, the basement office that was once again theirs. And once again a fresh crime scene, Jeffrey Spender in Arlington General, a bullet lodged in his brain. Their future full of unknowns and choices and dangers, both personal and professional. Landmines with triplines strung everywhere as they forged ahead.

Mulder reflexively tightened his arms around her. “You know what I want?” he asked her suddenly. He had lined up their rings, and then thumbed hers on her finger, almost absent-minded.

Scully surprised herself with the catch in her throat. She swallowed it, she said, “The first flight to Malaysia?”

Both serious and not, the standard they had established for the week. Mulder smiled down at her, wondering fleetingly how he would answer once they touched down in D.C.

But no, that wasn’t it. He looked at her face, framed in one pane of glass. Scrubbed clean and freckled, trying to not appear interested in what he had to say.

He nodded out the window. She followed his gaze. Each postage-stamp yard was impossibly green, impeccably tidy. 

He said into her ear, “I want a 200-pound Mastiff.”

Okay, now she laughed. He held up his hands in front of her to paint her the picture.

“That’s your plan for tomorrow?” she said.

“Can I, please?”

“You’d do that to the neighbors?”

Mulder said, “We’ll name him Bruno. I’ll love him just like a son.”

He kissed over her ear, moving his chin to her shoulder. His arms back around her. Just like them, she thought. Insubordinate in everything, forging their own path. Incapable of complying with the simplest of orders. She turned thirty-five years old, and that was the last thing that had changed.

A moment, then:

“Mulder.”

He had opened his mouth on the tender spot by her ear. Occupied, he ignored her. She said his name again.

“Ssh,” he whispered back. They were framed in the window. “It’s called keeping our cover. They could be out there watching.”

Her reflection smiled. The irony of it, the reversal of their usual fortune. Mulder had pulled her hair back, bending to kiss the underside of her jaw. His hand slid in her robe.

“Not here,” she whispered, just for the sake of it.

“Right here,” he whispered back.

“You’re breaking the rules.”

“You’re breaking our cover.”

“Mulder.”

“Rob,” he said.


End file.
